The Bee Stings Pentebabbleist Fakery

The young man was expected to begin speaking in heavenly languages as a verifiable seal of his salvation beginning around age six—but after much disappointment and many years of faith, prayer, perseverance, and practice mimicking the adults he observed at his charismatic church each Sunday, local teen Lewis Strahan, 16, has finally been blessed with the gift of faking tongues.

“Though he excelled early at describing intricate, wild fantasies as ‘visions from the Lord’ and ‘prophecies,’ it took Lewis forever to understand the proper way to feign speaking in tongues,” Strahan’s mother told reporters Wednesday. “He would be able to execute a half dozen solid syllables but then he would just repeat them over and over and over—it sounded totally forced and inauthentic.”

“Plus, the tongue roll has been tripping him up for years,” she added.

Strahan’s father confirmed the struggle young Lewis has fought through. “He was all vowels for so long. It sounded like an opera or something. We’re just glad he’s mastered this now, finally, so we can be sure of his salvation.”

At publishing time, Strahan had begun to practice his next big challenge: being “slain in the Spirit.”

even the most entranced pentecostal has to admit that there’s more than enough fakery in the whole ‘unknown’ tongues thing. besides, it was paul who said he would rather speak a few sensible words than thousands of tongue blatherings.

I agree with your first sentence. As for Paul’s claim, it holds true only within the context in which he meant it: that of speaking out loud in a worship service, especially where noncharismatics might be present. For his more general view, we have his contrasting claim, “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than ye all”.

A little exegesis would show the error of that claim, but I’ll just stick to the main point, which is that Paul’s general view of tongues was that its abundance in his life was something for which he thanked God.